Up & Atom

These guys won major points before I even put their record on, due to the sheer computer geekery. The Sinclair Spectrum was the best 8-Bit computer (heck, the best computer) ever made. Boo to your 16 bits, I made do with half that number and had double the fun. Then there was the fact that the CD came with a giant floppy disk! I had never seen anything like it and I love old computers and nonsense like that. It's bigger than those old BBC Micro 5 1/4 inch disks. Actually, I reckon it's just a press release gimmick now that I think about it and open up the disk to find a few bits and pieces inside. But not to worry.

Then I put the CD on, this is great! And I promise I am not biased because of that giant floppy disk. The first song is "Headlights" and it is really nice and poppy indie rock, the kind of stuff nobody ever sends me for free, the kind of thing you might have stumbled across as the band who played before the Promise Ring or Braid around 1998 I guess. That kind of gorgeously fun emo-pop gently imbibed with spirit o' Superchunk. The guitars bounce along catchily, the bass subtly nudges things in the right direction, and the melody slowly seeps into my head. Damn. I need to put these on a tape and play them in the car over and over already. The vocals are really nice. They are soft in places but not to the point of being wishy-washy, and they compliment the music really well. Too often bands that want to play this sort of thing get a really awful singer. Not the case here. Wow, why did I not play this for about a month when I first received it? I'm such a dork. I think I got it into my head that they were going to be nothing like what they actually sound like. "Tapedeck" is another really nice song on here (sadly, there are only 4), which starts off with intentionally scruffy Wrens-esque guitars, before later just totally falling away in a beautiful twinkle bliss out. Then we get the final song, "1509", which is just absolute fun. Fast paced, poppy mid-west genius. It's all good.

This is way ace. Biggest surprise in ages, thanks for sending me this, wow. I wish everything I got sent was a good as this. These guys and the 101 and maybe some cuddles are going to make winter warmer.